By Eric J. Savitz 

You won't yet find quantum computing showing up in any significant way on corporate income statements or Wall Street models, but scientists are increasingly talking about its power -- and it could one day become a material part of technology companies' results.

IBM, pushed along by the 3,000 people inside its research division, is one of the companies leading the way in quantum computing, which offers a way to break through the limitations of so-called classical computing.

At a basic level, classical computing is digital -- it relies on bits -- the smallest unit of information being in one of two states. On or off. Yes or no. One or zero. But quantum computing has the capability of being zero and one at the same time.

For a crude metaphor, think of a coin that is flipped. When it lands, it is either heads or tails. But what is it when it's still in the air? It has the potential to be both.

The takeaway is that quantum computers have the ability to handle certain kinds of highly complex problems, in particular those with a large number of potential solutions that even conventional supercomputers can't handle.

Dario Gil, who runs IBM's vast scientific army, says that, in May 2016, the company became the first to connect a quantum computer to the cloud. IBM now has more than 20 quantum computers online, he adds, running more than two billion "quantum circuits" a day.

Gil says that quantum computers haven't yet crossed the threshold to doing things that you couldn't do with classical computing -- but he says the company should cross that line in the next few years. And he notes that the interest level is high, with over 300,000 users in the scientific and development community around the world.

Robert Sutor, a 39-year IBM veteran, is the company's chief evangelist for quantum computing, and the author of Dancing With Qubits, a 2019 book on the topic.

In an interview with Barron's, Sutor says that the nature of quantum computing is that it more closely resembles the natural world, which generally doesn't operate in a binary way. "If you want to compute about elements of nature," he says, "you need a computer that works the way nature does." Nature, he says, follows the behavioral rules of quantum mechanics. The world is analog, not digital.

Sutor is clear that quantum computing isn't a wholesale replacement for classical computing; instead, the systems will work together. But he also says that quantum techniques will be able to do things that conventional methods can't, in fields like chemistry, risk assessment, and artificial intelligence.

Auto maker Daimler (DAI.Germany) is experimenting with quantum computing techniques for battery development for future electric vehicles. The Cleveland Clinic is actually installing its own IBM quantum computer for research on pathogens, among other things.

The IBM Research division is well positioned to take up the quantum-computing challenge. A century of experience solving computing's largest problems should certainly help.

Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com